Herbert N. Foerstel

Herbert N. Foerstel (October 6, 1933 – September 20, 2024) was an American librarian and author known for his support of library privacy rights and his research into book banning.

Early life and education Foerstel was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the second oldest of five children of musicians William Herbert and Margaret Foerstel. His parents divorced when he was young and his mother remarried John Boe, a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman who later rose to be a corporate executive with P. F. Collier. The family moved frequently and Foerstel grew up in Indianapolis, Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago and Long Island. He later earned a master's degree in Science from Johns Hopkins University in 1970.

Career Foerstel started his career as a fine arts librarian from 1959 to 1966 at Towson State University. He then moved to be a science librarian at the University of Maryland at College Park, becoming head of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Library. He worked at UMD from 1967 through 1996. He was a member of board of directors of the National Security Archive at George Washington University and the Freedom to Read Foundation.

While working in libraries, Foerstel wrote a number of books about library censorship and privacy. Surveillance in the Stacks, The FBI's Library Awareness Program was an exposé of the history of the FBI's attempts to infiltrate libraries. Foerstel had met with FBI agents who visited UMD libraries looking for book-lending records of patrons with "Eastern European or Russian-sounding names." Foerstel did not feel comfortable complying with these requests. He did some research and took part in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, discovering that the FBI had been visiting science libraries in the United States for 13 years under a project which became known as the Library Awareness Program. He worked with the university to create and implement policies protecting patron records and later worked with Maryland legislators to advocate for legislation guaranteeing the privacy of all Maryland library records. Foerstel retired from his university work in 1996 and continued to write about First Amendment issues.

Banned in the U.S.A.: A Reference Guide to Book Censorship in Schools and Public Libraries looked at book-banning incidents from 1976 to 1992 and was later updated to include information about book bans, including interviews with authors and reviews of court cases, through 2000. The book included a Survey of Banned Books which contained annotated entries on the 50 most frequently challenged books from 1996 through 2000.

Personal life and death Foerstal married Lenora Shargo, an art professor who he met while they were carpooling from their shared apartment building to Towson. The couple had three children. Lenora died in 2018. Herbert Foerstel died on September 20, 2024, at the age of 90.

Honors and awards Foerstal won a Hugh Hefner First Amendment Award in 1988. His 1991 book Surveillance in the Stacks was chosen by Choice as a Best Academic Book in 1990.